page_title: Willamette Cattle Company
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: Willamette Cattle Company / Background
context_page_description: The Willamette Cattle Company was formed in 1837 by pioneers in the Willamette Valley of present-day Oregon, United States. The company was formed with the express purpose of purchasing cattle in Mexican California. Nearly 750 head of cattle and 40 horses were purchased in total. Ewing Young lead the overland party as they drove these animals overland north back to the Willamette Valley.
context_section_description: Prior to the activities of the Willamette Cattle Company, all cattle in the region were owned by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). Chief Factor John McLoughlin had for sometime a general arrangement with the Willamette settlers and missionaries for access to livestock. They were loaned out in pairs to farmers, never sold, and all calves born were then HBC property. The Methodist Mission in Oregon was in 1834 given "seven oxen, one bull and eight cows with their calves" by McLoughlin. Despite later claims by Samuel Thurston, no settler was charged for any cattle that died. The growing herds of cattle tended outside Fort Vancouver numbered only 27 in total in 1825, though by 1837 Slacum estimated their number closer to a thousand.
  Navy Lieutenant William A. Slacum arrived on board the Loriot at Cape Disappointment on 22 December 1836. Slacum had been given orders by the United States Secretary of State John Forsyth to visit and detail "the different settlements of whites... and also at the various Indian villages" in the Oregon Country and in the Columbia River basin. John McLoughlin welcomed the naval official and informed Jason Lee of his arrival, who met Slacum at Champoeg in January. A common topic Slacum had with French-Canadian and American settlers residing in the Willamette Valley was about livestock. Finding the Willamette settlers in the supposed "thraldom of the Hudson Bay Company", Slacum proposed that cattle from Alta California be procured to end the local cattle monopoly of the HBC.
caption: John McLoughlin
exif: {}